The most useful tips for women, by women. While we have learned to respect (and finally listen to) the hard-won wisdom of our mothers, there’s nothing we love more than another nugget of great advice. We are all constantly on the lookout for new answers to life’s everyday challenges, such as: Q: How can I not look so tired? A: Massage your ears. (It works!) Q: How can I mend a hem if I don’t have time to sew it? A: Use adhesive tape from the first-aid kit. Q: What should I do if I’m having trouble sleeping? A: Eat a banana. Q: How can I keep a friendship platonic? A: Give him advice, especially about the way he drives. From beauty questions to cooking tips, money advice, style pointers, and all you need to know about love and friendship, here are the most helpful secrets that women from around the world have shared on Kate Reardon’s website, TopTips.com. So use this handy resource the next time you can’t remember what your mother always used to say, or when you’d just prefer advice from someone with a different perspective (who won’t give you a hard time if you don’t do what she says).

A Message from Mike Rowe, the Dirty Jobs Guy: Just to be clear, About My Mother is a book about my grandmother, written by my mother. That’s not to say it’s not about my mother—it is. In fact, About My Mother is as much about my mother as it is about my grandmother. In that sense, it’s really a book about “mothers.” …It is not, however, a book written by me. True, I did write the foreword. But it doesn’t mean I’ve written a book about my mother. I haven’t. Nor does it mean my mother’s book is about her son. It isn’t. It’s about my grandmother. And my mother. Just to be clear.—Mike A love letter to mothers everywhere, About My Mother will make you laugh and cry—and see yourself in its reflection. Peggy Rowe’s story of growing up as the daughter of Thelma Knobel is filled with warmth and humor. But Thelma could be your mother—there’s a Thelma in everyone’s life. She’s the person taking charge—the one who knows instinctively how things should be. Today, Thelma would be described as an alpha personality, but while growing up, her daughter Peggy saw her as a dictator—albeit a benevolent, loving one. They clashed from the beginning—Peggy, the horse-crazy tomboy, and Thelma, the genteel-yet-still-controlling mother, committed to raising two refined, ladylike daughters. Good luck. When major league baseball came to town in the early 1950s and turned sophisticated Thelma into a crazed Baltimore Orioles groupie, nobody was more surprised and embarrassed than Peggy. Life became a series of compromises—Thelma tolerating a daughter who pitched manure and galloped the countryside, while Peggy learned to tolerate the whacky Orioles fan who threw her underwear at the television, shouted insults at umpires, and lived by the orange-and-black schedule taped to the refrigerator door. Sometimes it takes a little distance to appreciate the people we love.

While Julia Sweeney is known as a talented comedienne and writer/performer of her one-woman shows, she is also a talented essayist--and the past few years have provided her with some rich material. Julia adopted a Chinese girl named Mulan and then, a few years later, married and moved from Los Angeles to Chicago. She writes about deciding to adopt her child, strollers, nannies, knitting, being adopted by a dog, The Food Network, and meeting Mr. Right through an email from a complete stranger. Some of the essays reveal Julia's ability to find that essential thread of human connection, whether it's with her mother-in-law or with an anonymous customer service rep during a late-night phone call. But no matter what the topic, Julia always writes with elegant precision, pinning her jokes with razor-sharp observations while articulating feelings that we all share.--From publisher description.

Ernest always does what his mother asks...and never has any fun. When a new boy moves in next door, Ernest's mother encourages her son to make friends. But the new neighbors seem a little bit...strange--monstrous, even. Obeying Ernest's new friend Vlapid's mother means Ernest must do things he'd never dare try at home. And it's fantastic! Veteran children's book author Florence Parry Heide and her daughter Roxanne Heide team up with Kyle M. Stone to create a gleefully subversive take on the traditional new neighbor story. Lots of energy and mayhem, and a cool gothic approach to the illustrations make this a great choice for Halloween and all year round.

Jerry Arterburn's story parallels that of thousands of men who are troubled by homosexual desires, but want to change. Rejected, alienated, and seduced into the world of homosexuality, Jerry suffered the devastating effects of AIDS before finding hope, acceptance, and an escape. Jerry's story, told with his brother, Steve Arterburn, gives readers hope. They give a way out of homosexuality for those who want to escape. It's a frank story that tells the truth about homosexuality and about how to find freedom and a new life. Why do men become homosexuals? Is there a Way out? What should parents do when early signs of homosexuality develop? How should family and friends respond to gay loved ones? What about gays who have AIDS? Stephen Arterburn founded New Life Clinics, created the Women of Faith conferences attended by more than 1,000,000 women, and hosts the daily radio program, New Life Live. He is the author of more than 40 books, and has been featured in the New York Times and USA Today. Stephen lives with his family in Laguna Beach, California. He wrote this book with his brother, Jerry, who passed away from the effects of AIDS in 1988.

Irreverent, thought-provoking, hilarious, and edgy: a collection of personal stories celebrating motherhood, featuring #1 New York Times bestselling authors Jenny Lawson and Jennifer Weiner, and many other notable writers. Listen to Your Mother is a fantastic awakening of why our mothers are important, taking readers on a journey through motherhood in all of its complexity, diversity, and humor. Based on the sensational national performance movement, Listen to Your Mother showcases the experiences of ordinary people of all racial, gender, and age backgrounds, from every corner of the country. This collection of essays celebrates and validates what it means to be a mother today, with honesty and candor that is arrestingly stimulating and refreshing. The stories are raw, honest, poignant, and sometimes raunchy, ranging from adoption, assimilation to emptying nests; first-time motherhood, foster-parenting, to infertility; single-parenting, LGBTQ parenting, to special-needs parenting; step-mothering; never mothering, to surrogacy; and mothering through illness to mothering through unsolicited advice. Honest, funny, and heart-wrenching, these personal stories are the collective voice of mothers among us. Whether you are one, have one, or know one, Listen to Your Mother is an emotional whirlwind that is guaranteed to entertain, amuse, and enlighten.

Customer experience pioneer Jeanne Bliss shows why “Make Mom Proud” companies outperform their competition. Her 5-step guide to customer experience and culture transformation makes this achievement possible. Bliss urges companies to make business personal to earn ardent fans and admirers, by focusing on one deceptively simple question: "Would you do that to your mother?" “Make Mom Proud” companies give customers the treatment they desire, and employees the ability to deliver it. They turn “gotcha” moments into “we’ve got your back” moments by rethinking business practices, and they enable employees to be part of the solution to fix customer frustrations. Bliss scoured the marketplace seeking companies who excel at living their core values, grounded in what we all learned as kids. She offers a five-step plan for evaluating your current behaviors and implementing actions at every level of the organization. Step 1. “Be the Person I Raised You to Be” Understand how you are hiring, developing and trusting employees to bring the best version of themselves to work. Vail resorts, for example, the world's largest ski resort operator, banned the three words "Our policy is..." from their vocabulary, freeing employees to take spirited actions to deliver "the experience of a lifetime." Step 2. “Don’t Make Me Feed You Soap” Learn the eight key frustrations that bind us as customers (waiting, fear, anxiety, the black hole of no communication, etc.) and how to apply actions from companies who are delivering a seamless, frictionless and easy experience. Step 3. “Put Others Before Yourself” Determine if your focus is on helping customers achieve their goals – and evaluate how that is fueling your growth. Canada's Mayfair Diagnostics, for example, spent over a year studying the emotions of patients entering an imaging clinic, so they could redesign their welcome to deliver warmth and caring over procedure and process. The newly designed clinic achieved profitability in record time. Step 4. “Take the High Road” Learn how companies who do the right thing rise above the competition. Virgin Hotels, for example, named #1 U.S. hotel by Conde Nast Reader's Choice Awards, walked away from price gouging at the mini bar, so you'll never pay more for that Snickers bar than what you'd pay at the corner market. Step 5. “Stop the Shenanigans!” Evaluate your current company behaviors and identify the key actions that you can begin immediately. With 32 case studies and examples from more than 85 companies, this is a practical and easy to follow guide for your experience and culture transformation. Filled with comics to snapshot our experiences as customers, a “mom lens” to reflect continuously on your performance, and a “make-mom-proud-ometer” quiz – the book makes Bliss’s approach accessible and approachable. Join the movement to #MakeMomProud by applying this book across your organization. Whether you're contemplating your company's returns policy, its social media presence, or its big-picture strategy, this approach will help your company anticipate both employee and customer needs, extend patience, and show respect at all times.

As heard on NPR's "All Things Considered" and "This American Life, " Leveridge spins the mostly true tales of small-town Lotharios and big-city dreams in a voice that is simultaneously hip and homespun--and utterly his own. National Public Radio sponsorship.

“You will devour these beautifully written—and very important—tales of honesty, pain, and resilience” (Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Times bestselling author of Eat Pray Love and City of Girls) from fifteen brilliant writers who explore how what we don’t talk about with our mothers affects us, for better or for worse. As an undergraduate, Michele Filgate started writing an essay about being abused by her stepfather. It took her more than a decade to realize that she was actually trying to write about how this affected her relationship with her mother. When it was finally published, the essay went viral, shared on social media by Anne Lamott, Rebecca Solnit, and many others. This gave Filgate an idea, and the resulting anthology offers a candid look at our relationships with our mothers. Leslie Jamison writes about trying to discover who her seemingly perfect mother was before ever becoming a mom. In Cathi Hanauer’s hilarious piece, she finally gets a chance to have a conversation with her mother that isn’t interrupted by her domineering (but lovable) father. André Aciman writes about what it was like to have a deaf mother. Melissa Febos uses mythology as a lens to look at her close-knit relationship with her psychotherapist mother. And Julianna Baggott talks about having a mom who tells her everything. As Filgate writes, “Our mothers are our first homes, and that’s why we’re always trying to return to them.” There’s relief in acknowledging how what we couldn’t say for so long is a way to heal our relationships with others and, perhaps most important, with ourselves. Contributions by Cathi Hanauer, Melissa Febos, Alexander Chee, Dylan Landis, Bernice L. McFadden, Julianna Baggott, Lynn Steger Strong, Kiese Laymon, Carmen Maria Machado, André Aciman, Sari Botton, Nayomi Munaweera, Brandon Taylor, and Leslie Jamison.